Cake or Death?
by Checkerboards
Summary: The Riddler finds himself locked in the Aperture Science Enrichment Center. Crossover with the video game Portal.
1. Hello, Friend

_Hello, and welcome to another entry in Crossovers that Probably Shouldn't Exist. The things that belong to DC belong to DC, the things that belong to Valve belong to Valve, and the title belongs to Eddie Izzard. The things that belong to me, which are few and far between, belong to the voices in my head that make me write craziness like this. Also, please note that massive, massive spoilers and direct quotes from Portal exist here. If you haven't already, go buy the game and play it, because it is constructed entirely out of awesome. (Or, if money's tight, you can get the first eleven levels for free in the Portal: First Slice demo right now at steampoweredgames dot com!) And if you already have played the whole game - well, the last verse of the closing credits should give you a clue as to when this takes place._

_Dedicated to the WCC. Love ya!_

* * *

Edward Nygma had nightmares.

Everyone in the rogues' gallery knew it. Harvey Dent snored, Jervis Tetch talked in his sleep, and Eddie Nygma woke up terrified at least once a month. It was one of the many reasons that the Scarecrow had been reassigned to a cell much further down the hallway. (The others included a particularly nasty trick involving the heating ducts and a piece of string as well as the revenge prank, which involved several gallons of Mop 'n' Glo and a dead fish.)

This particular nightmare was astonishingly vivid. Three small, hairless creatures that vaguely resembled roasted turkeys chased him down Arkham's echoingly empty halls, slavering with joy at the thought of latching onto his head and sucking on his brain like a three-pound grey lollipop. He pounded down the hallway, laceless shoes squeaking horribly on the linoleum, and skidded to a halt around a corner. The little creatures swung around to follow him, taloned feet sliding helplessly on the tile, and he took the opportunity to boot one of them into the air. It yowled as it spun wildly into a nearby security camera. Eddie had no time to watch its fiery death, though, as the two remaining beasts simultaneously leaped for his head. He dropped to the ground, somersaulted away, and rolled into a run as the creatures recovered from their missed attacks and resumed the chase.

This wasn't the first time he'd had a nightmare about things eating his brain. In fact, his nightmares rarely strayed away from that theme. His brain defined who he was, even beyond the trivial matters like personality and keeping his body functioning. Without intelligence, the Riddler was nothing - and so, night after night, he dodged threats to his precious mind with panicked speed.

Zombies had lurched after him. Cavemen with trepanning clubs had pursued him, grunting about freeing the demons in his skull. There had even been one rather memorable night when flying televisions had squawked through the air at him, blaring celebrity gossip and infomercials and other programs guaranteed to make the human mind slowly rot away from the inside out.

Tonight's breed of four-legged squirmy thing had managed to trap him in the row of offices housing Arkham's therapists. He tore down the hallway, heading for the rec room. There might be weapons in there, or help...at the very least, he could lock the snarly little beasts out! Triumphant shrieks rang out behind him as he flung the rec room door open.

There was a dull _clickclickclick _of claws on linoleum as a thousand angry little creatures turned to eyelessly regard the Riddler. He gaped at them for one moment of horrified paralysis.

_Whump_. "Getoffgetoff_getoff_!" he screamed, clawing at the beast on his head. He ripped it free and punted it into the rec room, only to see the little creatures leaping and stomping over one another to get at him. He wheeled around and raced through the halls, a horde of little deadly monsters at his heels. They bounded behind him like overgrown cats, jumping impossibly high into the air to try and catch the prize buried in his skull. Talons scraped along his lower legs, scratching at him, trying to stop him from escaping.

His cheap laceless shoe, worn and damaged, disintegrated around his right foot with a sad little tearing noise. Eddie tumbled head-over-heels into a pile of the creatures, and they swarmed over him with chirps of utter delight as their foul saliva dripped onto his face -

_Bzzt_. A mechanical alarm sounded, jerking him awake just as a horrible little mouth dug into his scalp. As was his custom after nightmares, he twitched into a sitting position to take stock of his surroundings and make sure that they were zombie-free.

At least, he tried to. His forehead connected with a solid _twhamp_ on a plexiglass shield over his face. It _whoosh_ed back, revealing a ceiling made of cold grey tiles. He lay there for a moment, panting, feeling the sweat on his skin turn cold as a nearby vent sent an icy breeze into his bed.

He rubbed his forehead and slowly eased into a sitting position. The cold grey ceiling matched the cold grey walls of the outer room, illuminated by a single light bulb trapped in a safety cage. The bed was inside a roughly six-foot-by-six-foot cube of plexiglass with one solid cement panel in the corner. Okay, nothing too surprising there. Walls like that meant institutions. Arkham's tended to be a bit dirtier than these, so he had to assume that he'd been transferred somewhere new.

He felt like he'd been asleep for years. He rolled his shoulders, stretching stiff muscles, and swung his legs to the floor. Instead of canvas shoes landing with a dull _thump, _as he'd expected, his bare toes hit cold linoleum with a loud _clang_. His knees jerked back into the air as something set his feet bouncing like a rubber ball.

He stared down at his calves. He was wearing some kind of orange jumpsuit - again, no surprises there - that had the pant legs rolled up to the knees. Wrapped firmly around the top of each calf was a large, padded band that felt like it was covering solid steel. From each band, a long, thin curve of metal stabbed down toward his ankles, extending a good three inches past his bare heels before bending underneath his foot.

Well. _These_ were certainly new. He bounced the things on the ground a few times, noting with interest how the bands bent and moved under the pressure of his legs.

A mechanical female voice crackled into existence. "Hello, and again, welcome to the Aperture Science Computer-Aided Enrichment Center. We hope your brief detention in the Relaxation Vault has been a pleasant one. Your specimen has been processed, and we are now ready to begin the test proper." Eddie raised an eyebrow. What kind of test necessitated these grasshopper legs? And why had they wanted _him_? Normally, they wanted to test his mind (who wouldn't, with a mind like his?) and pen-and-paper tests rarely required weird footgear. "Before we start, however, keep in mind that although fun and learning are the primary goal of all Enrichment Center activities, serious injuries may occur. For your own safety, and the safety of others, please refrain from..." The voice hissed and spat in Spanish as the lights fizzled and dimmed for a moment.

Eddie ignored the spasming electronics. Serious injury? What kind of place _was_ this? Maybe he could just refuse to participate. The little cell was comfortable enough, after all - the bed was soft, and they'd even left him a clipboard and a coffee mug to drink out of. No coffee - and, now that he looked for it, no sink, either - and no pen, but..._Hey_! He frantically scanned the room top to bottom. The room was also lacking in doors. Maybe the test was happening in here! Maybe he was about to acquire a serious injury! He hopped to his feet, skittering uncontrolled across the floor as he miscalculated how to walk in the heelsprings, and flailed his way to a stop sprawled across the tiny table. The radio, which had been playing a cheerful little tune, went silent as his back muffled the speaker.

The lights returned to normal, and the voice continued as if it had never failed. "The portal will open in three...two...one."

Portal? Who on earth would have programmed the computer to call a door a portal? What kind of -

_Zap_. The solid cement wall glowed with an orange-rimmed, Eddie-sized hole in its center. He leaned closer to it, watching bits of orange energy flowing around the hole like oil on water. Through the hole, he could see another cell that certainly didn't line up with the wall behind his cell. Instant doors! Those would make his life so _easy_ in Gotham...he had to get whatever device made them possible.

But first, he'd get rid of these braces. He ran his fingers around the seamless band on his right calf. The speakers crackled into life again. "For your own safety, do not destroy vital testing apparatus." How had she...oh. A security camera glared at him from high atop a wall, the single red light blinking as the camera lens whirred and extended slightly.

"They're too big," he explained to the camera, tugging on the band.

"For your own safety, do not destroy vital testing apparatus."

"They're _too big_," he repeated. "I can't walk in these!"

A picture flashed up on the blank grey wall of a vaguely Asian woman wearing identical braces on her legs. She glided easily around on her toes, barely letting the metal touch the ground. "The heelsprings are designed for your protection," the voice informed him.

Great. He eased back onto his feet again and slowly wobbled to a standstill. Slowly, carefully, he clicked around the room until he was able to take five whole steps without a spectacular wipeout. The trick was to put hardly any weight at all on the springs, just enough to get his balance, and then jam his toes down to the ground before the spring sprung and sent him backward.

He tottered up to the hole in the wall and peered through it. He could see a cell with another prisoner in it. At least he wasn't alone! He raised an arm to tap on the wall and get the other man's attention.

The other man raised his arm at the same time - an arm that had a clipboard-shaped welt on it in exactly the same spot as Eddie's arm. Oh. It was him. How was he seeing himself? A blue hole on the other side of the room sparked and fizzed at him - and now he could see himself again, reflected through the blue one. So they weren't just doors through the wall...they were doors that opened up some kind of instant wormhole between them. This was _fascinating_.

He grabbed the coffee cup and tossed it lightly through the orange portal in front of him. It sailed out of the blue portal and shattered on the floor. If it was safe for coffee cups, perhaps it would be safe for him. Hesitantly, with an Indiana-Jones-stealing-the-idol air about him, he stretched a hand to the orange portal and tentatively reached through.

It felt like...well, it felt like nothing at all. It had exactly the same lack of feeling about it as it would have if he'd stuck his hand through a real hole in the wall. Of course, had it been a real hole, he probably couldn't turn around and see his hand ten feet across the room...somehow his hand was over _there_ while he was over _here_, and yet he could still see his hand right up close through the portal.

"Please proceed to the testing chamber," the voice ordered.

Before he could think too much about it, he squinched his eyes shut and hurtled toward the fizzing orange hole. There was a strange _whoosh_ing noise as he skidded blindly forward. He opened one eye to find that he was facing the cell wall - from the outside. It had worked!

What had the computer called them? Portals? Yes, these _portals_ could come in very handy for him...he whistled a cheery little tune as he scooped up the remains of the coffee cup, tucking them into the folds of his rolled-up sleeves. Something small and sharp _always_ came in handy. He sauntered through the entrance to the first testing chamber. He'd do whatever tests they wanted, steal the portal technology, and go back home. What could be simpler?

* * *

The first test consisted entirely of placing a heavy box on a large red button on the floor. He stared challengingly at the security camera. "Is this it? You brought me all the way here from Gotham for _this_?"

"Please proceed into the chamber lock after completing each test," the computer informed him.

He eyed the sparking blue forcefield that filled the door. "This Aperture Science Material Emancipation Grille will vaporize any unauthorized equipment that passes through it. For instance, the Aperture Science Weighted Storage Cube."

He dug a smallish piece of coffee cup from his sleeve and gently tossed it through the barrier. It hung there with no more weight than a feather for a moment - and then flamed, turned black, and disappeared in a shower of ashes.

"You can't seriously expect me to go through that," he protested. There was no answer. He put his back to the field and gingerly eased a heelspring through. It came out the other side, unharmed. He craned his head over his shoulder, examining the long bar of metal fervently for any hint of burning, and realized that he'd accidentally put his foot through as well. It stayed wonderfully untoasted. He scuttled through the field and into the elevator, wincing at the prickly feel of the energy field racing over his skin.

His arms felt hot. He glanced at his elbows and yelped as he realized that the little fragments of ceramic he'd tucked into his sleeve had burned away, leaving nothing but a smudge of ash and a healthy little fire burning through the thick material of the jumpsuit. He slapped it, wildly dancing in a circle as he tried to keep himself from burning alive.

The fire was out. With sooty hands, he scraped his hair off of his sweaty forehead. Rule one, apparently, was to listen to the computer.

The elevator doors slid open welcomingly and he stepped inside. It was nice to have elevators instead of having to climb stairs, he mused, leaning against a railing. The inside was battered, as if it had been last used for hauling monkeys with hammers. The walls weren't decorated very nicely, either, and whoever had decided that white padding would be good as wallpaper had clearly been - wait a minute. He examined the nearest panel of white padding. Under the layer of dirt, there were pulled threads and...was that a _bite_ mark? Who would bite an elevator? Who would hate an elevator enough to bite and claw at it like an animal?

_Someone who really didn't want to be here_, he answered himself. Why would anyone hate a simple testing facility?

He breezed through the next test - more portals, more buttons, more cubes. Yawn - and stepped into the elevator at the end, wondering when this nonsense would be over. When the elevator popped open, he stepped to the edge of the little entryway, which was walled over with a huge plexiglass window. A door to his right whirred and clanked repetitively as it fought a jammed piece of machinery keeping it open. His eyes widened with happy greed at the sight of an unguarded device on the floor below shooting portals into the wall. And all that kept him from retrieving it was a puzzle - an _easy_ puzzle! He trotted eagerly to the stairs that led down past the jammed door, ready to begin. The computer was speaking, and he ignored it.

That is, he ignored it until he heard it mention blood. "What?" he gasped, whirling toward the nearest speaker.

There was a quiet, slippery sound of metal on tile as Eddie's left foot decided to continue down the stairs by itself. Yelping and swearing, he tumbled down the short flight of steps and thudded to a stop against the nearest wall.

"...emancipate dental fillings, crowns, tooth enamel, and teeth," the computer finished calmly.

"Hey. What about my teeth?" he snapped, slowly lurching to his feet. There was no answer. "_Hey_!"

The only response was a security camera whirring as it extended a lens in his direction.

Eddie grimaced at it. He _liked_ his teeth. (Well, what was left of them, anyway - Batman and his associates had done their share of unwanted dental work on him through the years, and most of his gleaming white smile was porcelain.)

_Zap._ He limped through the portal and up to the little pedestal where the portal device rested on rubbery supports. He lifted it with his scorched and bruised hands and snuggled it close. Oh, sweet device!

"You are now in possession of the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device," the computer intoned. "With it, you can create your own portals. These intra-dimensional gates have proven to be completely safe. The device, however, has not. Do not touch the operational end of the device." The computer continued with a long list of 'Do nots' as Eddie looked the device over. Don't do this, don't do that - well, that was all well and good, but how did you _work_ the thing? "Most importantly, under no circumstances should you..." The computer once again choked on static as the lights flashed and dimmed.

There was a trigger hidden behind a soft handgrip at the back of the gun, tucked under the white rounded shell that formed the casing. When he pulled it, a blue ball of light thumped out of the end of the device and splatted a hole in the nearest wall. He grinned and hobbled through it, making his way slowly down the tiny cement tunnel leading to the exit.

But there was no exit to be found. A door slammed shut behind him, trapping him in a tiny cement-walled room that was just about the size of his cell at Arkham. Solid plexiglass stretched above his head, revealing a second ceiling twelve feet up. And glimmering in the ceiling was a lone orange portal...

He fired his portal gun at the wall, and a blue portal obligingly opened up, showing the top of his head. He looked up at the orange portal again. Were they _serious_? Did they actually intend for him to throw himself out of the ceiling? Were they _crazy_?

He thought back to that little comment about losing teeth. Yes, they probably were crazy. He grabbed the side of the portal with his free hand and lowered himself through. Oh, this was going to _hurt_...he let go.

_Clang_. He bounced on the ground, unhurt, with a look of stunned surprise on his face. The heelsprings made it seem like he'd jumped a foot off of the ground instead of plummeting recklessly through the air. Well, as long as that was the only long-jump he'd have to do, he'd be fine.

With the portal gun snuggled in his arms, he ducked through the fizzling blue energy field and disappeared into the elevator.

(_to be continued_)

* * *

_Author's Note: I made a few changes here and there to the layout of the testing chambers. Spot them all and win a cookie! Also, headcrabs are adorable and I'd love a debeaked one as a pet. _


	2. Target Lost

_If you haven't played Portal yet, the ending's about to be totally spoiled for you. Consider this your last warning..._

* * *

"Once again, the Enrichment Center offers its most sincere apologies on the occasion of this unsolvable test environment."

"Oh, shut up," the Riddler muttered peevishly, instinctively ducking backward as a chittering head-sized ball of light zipped past him. He raised the gun and aimed it carefully at the walls. _Thump. Thump_. Two glimmering portals exploded out of the end of the portal device, intercepting the energy ball and redirecting it into the nearby holding chamber.

When no further balls of death came hurtling out of nowhere, he sighed and seated himself on the edge of his platform, feet dangling over the massive drop to the floor.

Edward Nygma was by no means a sheltered person. In the years that he'd operated as the Riddler, he'd run across things that were totally outside a normal person's field of experience. Once, he'd stolen a machine that could reduce an entire city block to finely ground sand with the touch of a button. He'd spent the next two weeks on a desperate quest to get away before the government caught up with him - and if most people couldn't fathom being him, they certainly couldn't understand that feeling of total horror when the SWAT team, bristling with weaponry, exploded through the wall of his hideout with enough pyrotechnics to supply an average KISS concert. Needless to say, Eddie was familiar with danger in a way that ordinary people weren't.

Normally, though, he wasn't the one picking his way through a building full of deathtraps. He still had no idea how he'd come to be trapped in Aperture Science's Enrichment Center, but he was seriously wishing that he could go back in time and do whatever it took to avoid coming here.

The tests had been easy enough at first. When the only things in the room were a heavy cube and a button helpfully labeled with a picture of the cube, it was blindingly obvious what had to be done to open the door. Likewise, when portals had come into play, it was simple to maneuver through them and solve whatever trivial little puzzle there was to solve.

The puzzles were still easy - intellectually, that is. The test-givers had obviously grown bored with traditional testing. No, they wanted to make it interesting...which was why Eddie was currently staring down at a floor that swirled with nauseating patterns of oily red, green, and yellow sludge.

The computer had warned him not to touch it. Well, actually, she had warned him that any contact with the floor would result in an unsatisfactory mark on his testing record, followed by death, but hopefully that was just exaggeration. In the spirit of scientific inquiry, Eddie gnawed a fingernail loose and flicked it to the floor below. It instantly disappeared as it made contact with the oily sludge - not sinking below the surface, but rather, dissolving with an audible hiss in a froth of bubbles.

"No one will blame you for giving up. In fact, quitting at this point is a perfectly reasonable response," the computer said smoothly.

"Didn't I say to shut up?" Eddie snapped. "You may as well stop telling me that this is impossible, because it's not. All I have to do is jump down to that platform there to get enough momentum to fling myself through the portals across the room and land at the door." He paused, glancing at the target platform far below him. The disgusting slop on the floor rippled gently as it made contact with the platform's edges. "It's possible," he said, trying to convince himself as much as the computer.

He set his portals up carefully, doing his best to sight flight-lines across the room so that he wouldn't end up flying into a bit of blank wall. The time had come. He balanced carefully, bare toes gripping the edge of the cold metal platform, and prepared to leap into the blue portal far below.

"Quit now, and cake will be served immediately," the computer purred.

With a startled twitch, Eddie lost his balance and hurtled toward the floor. "No, no, _no_," he wailed, kicking wildly as he fell. At the very last moment, he managed to catch one hand on the end of the portal and yank himself through. He sailed, kicking and screaming, through the air of the chamber. As he spun, the doorway swung in and out of his line of vision. _Oh please oh please oh _please_..._His back screamed at him as it impacted on the floor in the little open hallway leading to the elevator. He tumbled wildly for a few feet and came to a shuddering, gasping halt halfway through the blue particle field that stretched over the exit.

The speakers clicked into life. "Fantastic. You remained resolute and resourceful in an atmosphere of extreme pessimism."

Eddie pushed himself into a sitting position. "When this test is over," he growled softly, "I'm going to find your CPU and break it into a million tiny pieces. Then I'm going to light all the pieces on fire and throw the ashes into a vat of hydrofluoric acid. Do you hear me, you miserable heap of scrap metal?"

The computer didn't respond. It stayed silent as he slowly lurched to his feet, muttering about his future plans for the computer's demise and contemplating aloud what sort of ham-fisted amateurs had designed a computer that was so blazingly stupid that the word had yet to be invented to accurately describe it.

He limped into the elevator and leaned back against the soft white padding on the walls. As always, the elevator rumbled into motion and stopped shortly afterward, opening its doors to reveal nothing but a featureless grey hallway. Eddie adjusted his grip on the portal device and stepped inside, ducking through the prickly particle field with a grimace of distaste.

The computer started speaking with an oddly smug overtone to her synthesized voice. "Due to mandatory scheduled maintenence, the appropriate chamber for this testing sequence is currently unavailable. It has been replaced with a live-fire course designed for military androids. The Enrichment Center apologizes for the inconvenience, and wishes you the best of luck." The door at the end of the hallway clanked open.

Live-fire? Well, in theory, the pellets were sort of live-fire, weren't they? Eddie gingerly stepped into the chamber beyond the door. A large, squid-like robot, propped up on three spindly legs, intently watched the hallway leading out of the little glass-walled room.

A sweet little voice chirped "I see you!" The glass in front of him cracked as another robot beyond it sprayed bullets determinedly in his direction. He scrambled backward with a massive kangaroo bounce into the safety of the hallway.

The gunfire cut off abruptly. "Are you still there?" the robot asked wistfully.

Eddie looked into the lens of the nearest camera. "Look, if this is because I called you an Aibo with delusions of grandeur, I'm sorry." He poked his head into the room again. _Rattatattatattatatta_. "I'm _really_ sorry," he said, with his best sorrowful expression, the one that never failed to convince parole boards.

The computer pointedly stayed silent. With one long, steadying breath, Eddie crept into the chamber.

* * *

The Riddler was used to being shot at. Gotham cops, fellow rogues - even occasional armed bystanders had taken the occasional potshot at him as he liberated their valuables.

He wasn't used to people _aiming_, though. Nearly everyone who had ever raised a gun to him had intended to scare him, or to wing him so that he couldn't run away. In his entire life, no one had once threatened to actually _kill_ him when they shot at him. The little white gun-turrets with the adorable voices and the damnably accurate aim were the first.

He had managed to take out twelve of them so far. Lucky number thirteen stood quietly in front of the exit, its red targeting laser drawing a straight line across the door like a finishing tape. He'd learned from the first that they had to be upright in order to shoot. When you knocked them over on their sides, they automatically shut down to prevent misfiring.

Not that it was particularly _easy_ to knock them down, particularly when they were stationed in a square, each looking at another. _That_ little arrangement had almost done him in, particularly since the fourth was craftily hidden in a corner. He'd managed to duck behind a stack of weighted storage cubes just in time, with nothing but a bullet-dented heelspring to mark his near-death.

The last turret lurked quietly in its spot. Eddie deftly slipped a portal behind it and laid the gun on the ground behind the turret. With a grunt of effort, he snatched the turret around the middle, locking the guns in the closed position, and hoisted it into the air. "_Gotcha_," he snarled in a rough mockery of its voice.

"Who _are_ you?" it bleated back to him.

He didn't bother with an answer. Instead, he shoved the thing as hard as he could toward the particle field. The little robot whimpered as it disintegrated into powdery black ash.

"Well done, android," the computer congratulated coldly. "The Enrichment Center once again reminds you that Android Hell is a real place where you will be sent at the first sign of defiance."

Hell. Oh, god, that was it. He was in hell! He'd fallen off of a rooftop or gotten ripped apart by mutant lemurs or something, and now he was in hell, going through this maze of deathtraps until the end of time. It made _sense_. He was in hell to be tormented forever because he'd never beaten the Batman -

_Stop it_, he snarled at himself. _You're not in hell, you're in a testing center, so just _stop it_ and focus on the next test or you're not getting out of here alive_! He snatched the portal gun up and trudged into the elevator. He'd never been particularly religious - in fact, he'd never really questioned the existence or absence of any god - but it was hard not to wish for the security of a watchful deity when everything around him seemed designed specifically to destroy him.

The elevator doors hummed open. The walls of the new hallway were steel-plated. He swallowed hard. Steel plating wouldn't accept portals, which generally meant that something even deadlier than usual lurked around the next corner. "You did hear me apologize earlier, right?" he said tentatively into the dim hallway.

He trod carefully down the hallway, heelsprings clicking gently on the steel plates that covered the floor. The tiny room at the end of the hall held...nothing. No turrets, no deadly floors, no high-energy pellets threatening to vaporize him.

He reflexively twitched backward as the computer spoke. "The Vital Apparatus Vent will deliver a Weighted Companion Cube in three, two, one." As promised, a grey cube tumbled out of a vent in the ceiling and thudded into the ground. Unlike the other cubes he'd encountered so far, this one had pale pink hearts stenciled onto each side of it. "This Weighted Companion Cube will accompany you through the test chamber. Please take care of it."

"Okay," he agreed. The computer said to take care of the cube, and the computer presumably had a large supply of turrets and energy pellets. If the computer said take care of a cube, then he damn well was going to take care of a cube. Provided that the cube didn't split apart to reveal a center made of radioactive scorpions, he was already inclined to like it.

He tucked the portal gun under one arm and hoisted the cube into the air. It was lighter than the storage cubes, that was certain. With the cube in front of him, he trotted into the nearest hallway.

_Wham_. A high-energy pellet rebounded off of the cube and headed back the way it came. Eddie yelped and skittered after it, trying to duck beneath the emitter before the pellet came his way again. _Wham. Wham. Wham-wham-wham_! He ducked to the ground, panting, as the pellet zipped back down the hallway.

There was a black scorch mark marring one of the pink hearts on the cube. Guiltily, under the eye of the camera, Eddie unrolled a bit of his sleeve and carefully polished it off.

The computer's flat mechanical voice echoed off of the bare walls. "The symptoms most commonly produced by Enrichment Center testing are superstition, perceiving inanimate objects as alive, and hallucinations. The Enrichment Center reminds you that the Weighted Companion Cube will never threaten to stab you and, in fact, cannot speak."

Eddie threw himself backward, frantically scooting away as he waited for the cube to bristle with knives. Nothing happened. But no, she'd said it would never _threaten_ to stab him, which meant that it was probably still fully capable of opening him up like a fish about to be cleaned.

The small pink hearts twinkled as a pair of energy pellets shot by overhead. He eased a heelspring close to the cube and gave it a hearty kick.

The heavy cube rocked gently on its bottom. Eddie's spring-loaded leg, however, catapulted back, and his kneecap connected firmly with his chest. "**Molten tidal hall**," he swore anagrammatically as both his patella and sternum reminded him that they didn't appreciate being banged into one another.

The camera lens whirred softly as it zoomed in on him. Dammit! He was supposed to take care of the cube, not kick it! He hurriedly scooted back to its side and dusted it off. _Oh, please don't let her break out the turrets because of this_..."I'm sorry," he said to the camera. "Really. I didn't mean to..."

He paused. _Perceiving inanimate objects as alive_...

There were times to act normal, and then there were times to act crazy. Generally, Eddie didn't _need_ a crazy act, since what he did was perfectly rational. Granted, he got a bit..._excited_ at times, but that was just high spirits. When you were facing down a squadron of cops, or a fellow rogue, though, sometimes it paid to augment your personality with a little wild unpredictability.

And, if he got lucky, maybe they wouldn't continue testing someone who was clearly insane. With that in mind, he flung his arms around the cube and embraced it with all the tearful self-recrimination of an actress on the set of _All My Tragedies_. "I'm _so sorry_," he gushed, managing to squeeze a tear or two out. (The throbbing pain in his chest helped on that score.) "It was an accident! I'd _never_ hurt _you_..."

And so, with the Weighted Companion Cube lovingly snuggled in his arms, the Riddler set out to win his way through the next round of puzzles. When high-energy pellets ricocheted off of the cube, he wailed apologies and remorsefully wiped the soot from the face of his dear little friend. When he had to use the cube as a stepstool, he made sure to thank it profusely and give it hugs underneath the watchful eye of the camera. And, when he discovered a secret room lurking in the camera's blind spot, he made certain to pull the cube in after him.

The secret room was grim and gloomy. A single lightbulb in the ceiling sent dirty beige light over the walls and the broken cameras littering the floor. Eddie, cradling the cube, kicked a few aside to clear some space and reverently set the cube down on the cold metal floor. A pyramid of empty bean cans clattered to the floor as he poked at them with a heelspring.

Who had been here last? Whoever it was had had a lot of spare time and art supplies. He ran idle fingers over the wall, tracing words hastily scrawled with a fat black marker. "Because I could not stop for Death, he kindly stopped for me...the cube had food, and maybe ammo, and immortality." The mysterious wall-scrawling Dickenson-altering bean-eater had also taken the time to carefully replace each face in the wall posters with that of a gleaming Companion Cube, torn out from pieces of glossy paper that littered the floor in balls and scraps.

Eddie picked up a few of them and flattened them out. "_In response to this news, Aperture began developing the Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System (GLaDOS), an artificially intelligent research assistant and disk oper-_" So, the computer's name was GLaDOS, hmm? Good to know. He examined another scrap, this time printed on a page bearing an Aperture Science letterhead. "..._continued success of Aperture Science far into the fast-approaching distant past. Tier 1: The Heimlich Counter-Manuever - A reliable technique for interrupting the life-saving Heimlich Maneuver. Tier 2: The Take-A-Wish Founda-_"

Madness. If acting crazy didn't get him out of the test procedure, it just might land him a job in management. He hefted the cube again and turned to leave, running his eyes one last time over a poem written in the glaring red of an open wound. "Not in cruelty, not in wrath, the reaper came today...An angel visited this gray path, and took the cube away." Eddie turned and ducked through the portal, leaving the tiny painting of a winged, haloed Companion Cube alone on its dull grey wall.

The only task that remained was to leap onto a series of high platforms, and anyone who had ever been chased by Batman over Gotham's rooftops would find that challenge to be refreshingly familiar. Eddie hopped his way into the exit hall, congratulating himself on his skills and audibly murmuring thanks to the cube as he passed a camera.

"You did it!" GLaDOS said as he rested the cube on a large red button. A door clanked open at the end of the hall. "The Weighted Companion Cube certainly brought you good luck. However, it cannot accompany you for the rest of the test and, unfortunately, must be euthanized. Please escort your Companion Cube to the Aperture Science Emergency Intelligence Incinerator."

Method actors will tell you that if you pretend to be something for long enough, you can _become_ that something. Psychiatrists, in their turn, will tell you that emotions are heightened in dangerous situations, sparking unlikely love affairs and long-term infatuations. In this particular case, Eddie had pretended to love the cube for so long that he'd begun to believe it himself, and the mortal danger around every corner had twisted his emotions accordingly.

"You told me to take care of it!" he protested, placing a protective hand on it. "I'm not going to incinerate it!"

"Testing cannot continue until your companion cube has been incinerated."

This had to be some kind of a trick. The cube had stood up to at least ten hits from the high-energy pellets. Why would fire have any effect on it? He left the cube on the button and examined what lay behind the newly-opened door. A small button rested on top of a waist-high pillar. When he pressed it, he could see a round hatchway open up in a small alcove. Heat distorted the air above it. He crept out and examined the bulbous hatchway. The fire inside was so hot that he felt his eyebrows crisp when he glanced inside. After a few seconds, the hatchway slammed shut.

"Although the euthanizing process is remarkably painful, 8 out of 10 Aperture Science engineers believe that the companion cube is most likely incapable of feeling much pain."

But it wasn't alive! She'd said that perceiving it as alive was a side effect of...unless she meant that after he spent enough time with it, he would realize that it really _was_ alive! How else could it feel pain? "I won't do it," he said firmly.

"The companion cube cannot continue through the testing. State and local statutory regulations prohibit it from simply remaining here, alone and companionless. You must euthanize it."

Eddie glared impotently at the floor, where a helpful sign told him in pictures that fire was inside - and that the Companion Cube's heart was breaking.

GLaDOS wasn't going to let him out until the cube was dead. If he refused, if he sat in this little room with the cube and waited for her to break, he'd starve to death. She wasn't going to be persuaded by anything other than the death of the cube. Computers couldn't be manipulated unless you had a hand on the keyboard, and that wasn't really an option here.

And, in the end, whose life was more important? His own, or that of a cube which may or may not be alive in some weird, unexplained fashion? He was a damn sight more important than any cube!

So, regretfully, Eddie re-opened the hatchway and retrieved the cube, hurrying backward down the hallway until he felt the heat of the fire baking his back. "Goodbye," he whispered, letting the cube drop silently into the midst of the raging flames.

The hatchway shut as the exit door jerked open. "You euthanised your faithful companion cube more quickly than any test subject on record," GLaDOS informed him coldly. "Congratulations."

With his head down, and his arms feeling strangely empty, Eddie slouched into the elevator and slumped against the padded walls. There were two more test chambers to go - at least, that's what the wall-signs had told him. What could she possibly do that would be worse than what he'd already lived through?

* * *

Eddie staggered into the elevator at the end of the eighteenth chamber. A variety of new bruises decorated the exposed skin on his arms and legs. Tiny holes in the orange fabric of his coverall indicated that a splash of something corrosive had come dangerously close to drenching him.

Test chamber 18 had been an ordeal that Eddie would forever relive in his nightmares - that is, if he survived long enough to have any. If something had been dangerous in the previous tests, it was there in room 18, along with twelve of its buddies. Not only that, but he'd been expected to throw himself through midair not once, not twice, but again and again as that reddish-green slop bubbled menacingly below him.

The elevator doors slammed open on Chamber 19. "Welcome to the final test. When you are done, you will drop the device in the Equipment Recovery Annex. Enrichment Center regulations require both hands to be empty before any cake..." The lights dimmed and flickered as GLaDOS chittered "cakecakecakecaaaake-" The lights returned to normal.

Screw the cake. He was _keeping_ the portal gun. Eddie limped out of the elevator and into the test chamber.

The challenges were easy. _Too _easy. _Suspiciously_ easy. He stood tensed on a moving platform, ready for turrets to pop out of the walls. Maybe the platform would start tilting. Maybe the ceiling would start to collapse.

Instead, as he wove through the last portal, nothing happened. The wall ahead bore a regular exit sign paired with a drawing of a slice of cake. Eddie tightened his grip on the portal gun, wondering if it was possible to shoot portals into people.

"Congratulations. The test is now over," GLaDOS said triumphantly. The reason for her triumph became all too clear as the platform rounded a corner and began to descend into an enormous, blisteringly hot firepit. "All Aperture technologies remain safely operational up to 4000 degrees Kelvin. Rest assured that there is absolutely no chance of a dangerous equipment malfunction prior to your victory candescence. Thank you for participating in this Aperture Science computer-aided enrichment activity. Goodbye."

"Very funny," he called to the computer. "Really. Clever." He'd just come from a room where he had to hurl himself off of a fifty-foot tall platform toward a pool of liquid death while insufferably adorable gun turrets did their best to turn him into something resembling a motheaten sweater. Was a little fire _really_ supposed to scare him? It was the work of a moment to hop through a portal in the wall and reappear, unharmed, just past the fire in a recessed alcove.

"What are you doing? Stop it! I-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-..."

GLaDOS sounded...upset. She hadn't sounded like that before - in fact, she had congratulated him nearly every time that he'd narrowly evaded becoming a little red splat on the floor. All he'd done was bypass the fire...

She'd actually meant to kill him that time. No, that was stupid, you didn't kill your test subjects when the experiment was over! He walked to the very edge of his ledge, squinting down into the firepit. Just outside the reach of the fire was the scorched remains of a heelspring.

She'd tried to kill him.

The computer's voice whirred back into his hearing. "Weee are pleased that you made it through the final challenge where we pretended we were going to murder you. We are very very happy for your success. We are throwing a party in honor of your tremendous success. Place the device on the ground, then lie on your stomach with your arms at your sides. A party associate will arrive shortly to collect you for your party. Make no further attempt to leave the testing area. Assume the 'Party Escort Submission Position' or you will miss the party."

Right, because he _loved_ partying with murderers. Well, actually, he'd had a great time on the last Fourth of July, when Harley Quinn had invited all the rogues to come and have fun with things that went _boom_...no! Focus! He had to get out of here before GLaDOS sent her minions to collect him.

A small, open-walled room full of machinery was barely visible in the gloom far above him. With a sigh of one resigned to his fate, Eddie popped a pair of portals into the wall and floor and prepared to fling himself deep into the heart of the building.

* * *

There were no cobwebs in the depths of the building. It was odd, because in every other respect, the place looked like it had been deserted decades ago. The catwalks and stairs that the employees must have used to get around had long ago rusted through and fallen apart. Even the ladders screwed into the filthy walls came apart in his hands.

Fortunately, he still had the portal gun. When he was faced with a challenge - for example, the pair of rapidly hammering pistons that filled the hallway in front of him - he merely shot a portal behind them and strolled safely through.

GLaDOS's voice rang out blindly into the dimly lit corridor. "Maybe you think you're helping yourself, but you're not. This isn't helping anyone. Someone is going to get badly hurt."

Eddie ignored her, focusing instead on the little trapdoor in front of him. Well, it was the trapdoor or nothing...he slid down and stood on it.

It gave way beneath his feet, spilling him onto the floor of one of the early test chambers. "Okay, the test is over now. You win! Go back to the recovery annex for your cake," GLaDOS urged.

He sauntered through the puzzle and peered into the empty elevator shaft. Well, she certainly wouldn't be sending him an elevator _now_...he shrugged and portaled himself down to the floor far below.

"Uh oh. Somebody cut the cake. I told them to wait for you, but they cut it anyway. There is still some left, if you hurry back."

If he ever made it back home, Eddie vowed, he would never eat another piece of cake ever again. Ever. He might even have to blow up a cake factory or two, just to get the point across. No. More. Cake! Or no, better yet, he'd take a video of himself eating an entire cake and mail it to GLaDOS. Revenge, as they said, would indeed be sweet.

He trotted through the twisting halls of Aperture Science's basement, avoiding pistons and the occasional misplaced turret as he searched for an exit. A door, a window...he'd be willing to wiggle through a ventilation shaft, if that's what it took to get out of this place.

As if someone had been listening, a door (helpfully labeled _Main Floor Access_) appeared at the end of the dim hallway. He scampered toward it, beaming, only to discover that it had a lock. Normally, locks wouldn't pose a problem for him - locks were, after all, only a kind of puzzle - but this particular lock was fundamentally Riddler-proof. It was electronic, which meant he needed a key-code to get through (and this, again, normally wouldn't pose a problem for him, since he knew a few handy tips to rewire the things). The main factor standing in his way was the electricity.

Rather, the _lack_ of electricity. A powerless lock in a metal door meant that he wasn't getting through. He swore and slammed the side of his fist into the door before turning away and finding an alternate route.

GLaDOS spoke again, trying to find him in the camera-free warren of hallways. "Didn't we have some fun, though?" she asked wistfully. "Remember when the platform was sliding into the firepit and I said 'Goodbye!' and you were like '_NO WAY'_, and then I was all 'We pretended we were going to murder you'." She paused, as if expecting Eddie to chime in and agree that yeah, her almost killing him had been a _super_ fun time and he wanted to do it again. When he didn't answer, the happiness ebbed from her voice. "That was great."

Ah! A door without a lock! Eddie let himself through into an office. Huge monitors scrolled gibberish (and, he was totally unsurprised to note, cake recipes) on the walls. Clipboards filled with information about various test subjects were stacked haphazardly on desks.

There was a large red button on a pillar by the observation window at the far end of the room. Eddie squinted into the darkness. The window led to an empty room, and beyond that was another office. Why had they needed to observe other office workers? He tapped the button.

A bit of the floor clanked open. A machine like a snake made out of spheres lurched out of the hole. And then, with a cheerful _beep-beep-beep_, the thing shot a rocket directly at Eddie. He flung an arm protectively over his face and skittered backward.

The window exploded in a spray of glass. Eddie ducked around the corner, stopping only when his shoulderblades connected with the door. He was okay. He was okay. He shook his head, sending little shards of broken glass flying like dandelion fluff. He was okay.

This was a dead end, though. He had to get to the other office. He gingerly stuck one hand around the corner. The machine's light blue laser glided softly over it. _Beep-beep-beep_! He jerked his hand backward as a rocket sailed past and exploded on the wall.

So, it shot where he had been, not where he _was_. He was going to have to run barefoot over broken glass into a room with a rocket-launching snake, get it to break the other window, run barefoot over _that_ glass and hope there was a door on the other side before the snake-thing shot another rocket at him.

Well, he'd set Batman up with harder tasks in his time. And if Batman could do it...so could he. With his best Rambo expression tightening his lips, Eddie strode into the office to confront the rocket turret.

* * *

Rambo-Riddler's stoic bravery had lasted approximately three seconds when faced with the rocket turret. Eddie had managed to twitch out of the way of the rockets each time, once with a stunning hip-jerk that made him resemble a parenthesis for a brief moment accompanied with an embarrassingly falsetto yelp of horror.

Now he sprawled on the cold tile of the hallway beyond the turret, safely tucked behind two concrete walls. He had to be almost out of here. Office workers liked windows. There had to be a window _somewhere_...

"I'm not kidding now. Turn back or I will kill you."

_I'm really scared_, Eddie thought derisively. If she could have killed him, she would have done it by now. In defiance of all overbearing Disk Operating Systems with Genetic Lifeform components, he struggled to his feet and padded down the corridor.

GLaDOS didn't take it well. "I'm going to kill you, and all the cake is gone." He didn't dignify that with a response as he plodded along.

All the doors were locked and powered down. He grimaced as he tried the handles anyway. The only door left led to a glowing catwalk that connected this office with a large room suspended from the ceiling over an enormous drop.

He didn't want to go in there - he had a feeling he knew what was inside - but it was the only way out. With suddenly sweaty fingers wrapped around the portal device, he climbed the tiny staircase and clicked across the catwalk.

A particle field stretched over the end of the door. He darted through into a little anteroom that held a desk with a red phone, the cord of which had been roughly hacked in two, and another desk with a few disassembled computer parts. Beyond the anteroom, dangling from the ceiling in the middle of the room, was the roughly comma-shaped mass of metal that housed GLaDOS. She swayed gently inside the loop of monitors that circled her like the rings of Saturn.

"Well, you found me," she barked unpleasantly. "Was it worth it? Because, despite your violent behavior, the only thing you've managed to break so far is my heart."

_And a few windows, and a cube tube, and a half-dozen ladders_, Eddie added silently.

"Maybe you could settle for that, and we'll just call it a day," she continued flatly. "I guess we both know that isn't going to happen. You chose this path, now I have a surprise for you. Deploying surprise in five... four..."

Metal clicked and rattled as a basketball-sized sphere fell onto the ground. Eddie, not moving, examined it from where he stood. It had a glowing purple lens on the front of it in the middle of a pair of conveniently curved handles.

"Time out for a second. That wasn't supposed to happen. Do you see that thing that fell out of me? What is that? It's not the surprise... I've never seen it before."

Eddie shrugged silently.

"Never mind, it's a mystery I'll solve later, by myself, because you'll be dead."

Ah. Threats. He knew how to deal with threats - they were generally only used when people wouldn't (or _couldn't_) really hurt you. He approached the sphere, kicking it lightly with the tip of his heelspring. It obediently rolled away, coming to a halt after a few seconds.

"I wouldn't bother with that thing. My guess is that touching it will just make your life even worse somehow."

He'd begun this little adventure with listening to the computer. He'd tried _not_ listening to it - that hadn't been a good idea - and he'd tried _really_ listening to it - and that _also_ hadn't been a good idea. The only logical way to deal with her was to ignore her.

"Do you think I'm trying to trick you with reverse psychology? I mean, seriously now. Have I lied to you? I mean, in this room? Trust me. Leave that thing alone."

"In that case," he said, "I'll take a closer look at it." He lifted the surprisingly light sphere in one hand, checking it over for pop-out weaponry or acid nozzles.

GLaDOS sounded irritated now. "Okay, fine, DO touch it. Pick it up, and just stuff it back into me." Eddie rotated the device, checking its back side. Again, nothing unusual - it looked like a harmless little metal sphere. "That thing is probably some kind of raw sewage container. Go ahead and rub your face all over it," GLaDOS snapped.

He wandered around, inspecting GLaDOS from his vantage point on the floor. "You're smaller than I thought you'd be," he remarked, idly tossing the sphere in one hand. His fingers didn't quite close on the handle and the sphere fell to the floor, rolling to a halt beside a very familiar-looking hatchway - a hatchway he'd last seen when she'd ordered him to burn his Companion Cube...

GLaDOS sounded a little panicked now. "Maybe you should marry that thing since you love it so much! Do you want to marry it? _Well, I won't let you_! How does that feel?"

Oh, yes. He was definitely on the right track if she was starting to get anxious. Now, where was the button to open the hatch...maybe in that little blast-shielded room over there? He trotted up the small, curving staircase. Here it was, the same little button-on-a-pillar that had operated the last incinerator...

"Are you even listening to me? I'll tell you what that thing isn't. It isn't yours, so leave it alone," GLaDOS ordered.

With a smirk on his face, he pressed the button. With a portal to his left, and a portal near the hatchway, he had just enough time to hop through and drop the sphere into the fiery embrace of the incinerator.

The room shook as an explosion cracked loudly underneath the floor. Sparks flew as the lights flickered. "You are kidding me!" GLaDOS gasped. "Did you just stuff that Aperture Science Thing We Don't Know What It Does into an Aperture Science Emergency Intelligence Incinerator? That has got to be the dumbest thing that- Whoa, Whoa, WHOAAA..." Her voice slowed and blurred as the massive assemblage of metal swung in alarmingly wide arcs.

Maybe he'd killed her. That would be fantastic.

A disturbingly psychotic chipmunk chuckle hissed out of the speakers. GLaDOS's voice, without a trace of panic or anxiety, purred "Good news. I figured out what that thing you just incinerated did. It was a Morality Core they installed after I flooded the enrichment center with a deadly neurotoxin to make me stop flooding the enrichment center with a deadly neurotoxin...so get comfortable while I warm up the neurotoxin emitters."

Sickly green toxin began to spray out of the walls as a turret-snake uncoiled itself from the floor directly below GLaDOS. _Damndamndamn_! Eddie thought, skipping sideways as the blue laser light trailed over him. _Beep-beep-beep_! Another explosion cracked noisily behind him as he scampered away.

"Huh. That core may have had some ancillary responsibilities. I can't shut off the turret defenses. Oh well. If you want my advice, you should just lie down in front of a rocket. Trust me. It will be a lot less painful than the neurotoxin."

He was probably going to die at this point. And if he was going to die...why not take GLaDOS with him? Surely he could get the turret to shoot at _her_...

The portals! He turned and zapped two portals into the wall, one at his height, one at hers. The turret beeped happily as it locked in on him. He threw himself to the side, ducking out of the way as the rocket zipped directly toward GLaDOS.

_Crack_. A second sphere, knocked loose with the force of the explosion, bounced free from a tangle of wires and came to rest on a series of pipes. "All right," GLaDOS sighed. "Keep doing whatever it is you think you're doing. Killing you and giving you good advice aren't mutually exclusive. The rocket really is the way to go."

"After you," he snarled, snatching the sphere and darting toward the button, setting up new portals as he ran.

"That thing you burnt up isn't important to me," GLaDOS drawled. "It's the fluid catalytic cracking unit. It made shoes for orphans. Nice job breaking it, hero."

The sphere in his arms, its yellow lens shining at his face, vibrated as he ran. "Where are we going?" it chirped brightly. "Oooh, what's wrong with your legs?"

"Shut up," he snapped.

"Oooh, that thing has numbers on it!" the sphere said delightedly. "Is that a gun?" He hit the button and skidded through the portals. "Do you smell something burning - _AAAAAAAAAAAH!_" the sphere screamed as he hurled it into the fire. The lights blinked out for a moment as another explosion shook the suspended room.

"OW! You think you're doing some damage?" GLaDOS snarled furiously. "Two plus two is t...t...t..._ten_. In base four, I'm _fine_!" she howled.

He could see at least two more spheres clinging to her like baby possums. The rocket launcher snaked its way upward out of the floor. A portal _here_, a portal _here_, and -

(_to be continued_)

* * *

_Author's Note: What a perfect way to end the story. No? You want more? All right, fine. You wanted endings - I'll give you _six_ of them, because if there's one thing I've learned from gaming, it's that alternate endings are always fun._

_The information on the paper scraps was taken from Aperture Science dot com. _


	3. Ending 1: Action Movie Hero Boy

A portal _here_, a portal _here_, and - Eddie turned around, panting, sweat dripping into his eyes, only to see the heart-dropping sight of a rocket smoking cheerfully toward him. His bare toes slid wildly on the linoleum as he hurled himself away.

The world exploded behind him, throwing him violently forward in an uncontrolled tumble. He skidded heavily on the linoleum, rolling to a stop some ten feet away from the portal.

He was alive. He was _alive_! He was coughing as he inhaled the smoke from the explosion, and he felt extremely lightheaded, but he was _alive_! He laughed as he pushed himself into a sitting position. He was -

His leg was gone.

The rocket must have hit him in the foot. Ashes and rocket parts were sprayed in a huge circle behind him, splattered with copious amounts of little red things that were formerly a part of him. He stared at the stump that used to be his lower leg as it gushed blood from veins that flapped like bits of spaghetti. A grin cracked open his blackened, tearstained face as he started to laugh, choking on the smell of himself, burning. He'd probably gone completely crazy at that point. He didn't care.

Still laughing, he ripped the sleeve from his shirt and tied it tightly around the remains of his knee. That should give him, oh, maybe ten more minutes? He really only needed two.

It didn't hurt. It didn't hurt at all - which wasn't surprising, given that it had never hurt to be shot or stabbed before until the shock had worn off - and so he stood on his one remaining foot and the heelspring attached to what was left of his other leg and limped determinedly toward the portals.

"Stop squirming and die like an adult," GLaDOS ordered him flatly, "or I'm going to delete your backup."

He ignored her. Even if she was able to copy his personality into a blank clone, as she'd promised to do if he sat down and died quietly, he wasn't interested. He didn't care if she resurrected him - no, in fact, he _did_ care, because while it wouldn't be him, it would still be him in some odd, quantum way - and he loathed the thought of allowing her to toy with him again and again through the centuries.

Maybe that's what she'd been doing. Maybe _that's_ why the tests were so easy. Maybe -

Another rocket whizzed by him. Maybe he should kill GLaDOS _first_ and then it wouldn't be an issue anymore.

_Beep-beep-beep_. The rocket bore down on him. He stepped lightly out of the way and bowed mockingly at the twitching, gyrating mess of an AI dangling from the ceiling. The rocket sailed neatly through the portals and straight into the wiry innards of GLaDOS.

"Stop!" she gasped. "Okay, enough-" _Boom_. Whatever she had been saying dissolved in a spray of high-pitched gibbering as she thrashed wildly, popping loose another sphere. It rebounded off of the railings and hovered unmoving in midair, far above the ground.

He knew how to deal with _that_. Portal, portal, fling - portal, fling - he snatched up the growling, spitting sphere and bounced on the floor thirty feet below. The heelsprings bent and caught him painlessly. And if they hadn't, what did it matter? He was dead anyway...

He batted the sphere over to the incinerator. Coldly, flatly, GLaDOS spoke. "I'd just like to point out that you were given every opportunity to succeed. There was even going to be a party for you. A big party, that all your friends were invited to."

Orange portal. Blue portal. He limped through, heading toward the shiny red button.

"I invited your best friend, the Companion Cube. Of course, he couldn't come because you murdered him. All of your other friends couldn't come either because you don't have any other friends, because of how unlikeable you are."

Button. Back through the portal.

"It says so right here in your personnel file. Unlikeable. Liked by no one. A bitter, unlikeable loner whose passing shall not be mourned."

Sphere into the fire. "Right back at you," he wheezed, limping over to the tiny semicircular walkway that surrounded the AI. "You tin-plated bitch..."

Neurotoxin puffed out of the AI. Sparks like lightning danced over her surface. Cut wires dangled and swayed as she gyrated in a mad circle of death, whipping this way and that, her programs irreparably damaged. Twisting, writhing, and chattering garbled soprano gibberish, GLaDOS was propelled upward into the harsh white light of the outdoors.

Eddie, sprawled limply on the stairs of the walkway, nodded once in grim satisfaction. The walkway slowly hummed into motion and raised him up, up toward the light and the smell of green grass.

He hooked his heelspring around a pole to anchor himself to the moving walkway. _Safety first_, he thought muzzily to himself. The walkway clanked to a stop in the bright, bright sunlight, but he was still rising, floating up into the afternoon sunshine, and for the first time in years he felt nothing but warm, cottony security and utter happiness as he rose and rose...

* * *

There were certain automated procedures that kicked in after a situation such as this.

The flaming debris on the lawn was carefully extinguished. Bits of it were collected to be placed in storage.

The Portal device was removed from the corpse on the lawn and gently cleansed of all organic tissues that might have adhered to it in the testing facility.

And finally, regally, the GLaDOS entity descended from the ceiling and leisurely extended herself so that her robotic arms could replace the silly, useless spheres tucked in among her wires.

Her voice, as cheerfully flat as ever, said softly - "Gets them every time."


	4. Ending 2: Rated T for Torn Apart

A portal _here_, a portal _here_, and -

_Beep-beep-beep_. Eddie whirled around to see a rocket not ten feet away from him. He stood there, gaping at it, the portal device dangling heavily from one hand. A sudden, fleeting image of Wile E. Coyote flashed across his mind, and he wondered madly if Aperture Science was owned by Acme.

_Boom_.

Eddie jerked upright, panting, sweat glazing his forehead. He was somewhere soft. Soft and dark. Soft and dark didn't make sense - he'd been facing down a rocket in a room full of tile and hate and bright, bright lights, why was he...

He was in _bed_. He had had a nightmare, that was all, and it was over. He was safe. (As safe as he ever was, anyway.)

He kicked off the blankets. Yes, there he was, uninjured, with no heelsprings and no official Aperture Science jumpsuit. Okay. He was fine -

GLaDOS' voice spat metallic rage through his door. "You're still shuffling around a little but believe me, you're _dead_."

He squealed with terror and dove under the blankets. Oh god she was _here_ she was _here_ it was _real_ -

"The part of you that could have sur-" Her voice abruptly cut off. Footsteps thudded to his door.

"Eddie?"

It was Jackie. "Yes?" he asked, in a voice two octaves above his normal tone. He cleared his throat. "Yes?" he repeated, somewhat back to his normal range.

"Everything okay in there?"

"Fine," he squeaked.

"Okay," she said, unconvinced. Her footsteps receded.

He forced himself to stop death-gripping the pillow and relax. It was _over_. He could go back to sleep. He snuggled under the blankets, cuddled up with his pillow, and shut his eyes.

"-vived indefinitely is gone! I just struck you from the _permanent record_."

His eyes opened.

He calmly slid out of bed. He slowly pulled a T-shirt on and equally deliberately slipped into a bathrobe. He took his time putting on his slippers.

Then, with a tranquil expression on his face and his favorite baseball bat in hand, he calmly walked into the living room and beat seven brands of holy hell out of the laptop glowing with the image of GLaDOS. He turned to Jackie, who was sitting amid the debris with a look on her face that mimicked one of a recently deceased fish, and smiled politely. "Good night."

_Author's Note: Jackie is, of course, from my "House" series of stories. More endings to come!_


	5. Ending 3: Revenge Is Best Served Now

A portal _here_, a portal _here_, and -

The rocket zipped by him, missing him by a fraction of a fraction of an inch, and exploded on the wall behind him.

Hydraulics hissed somewhere deep in the floor. Eddie stared in horror as the tiles beneath GLaDOS sprouted with a forest of rocket turrets. The front of his orange jumpsuit glowed blue as they turned their laser sights in his direction.

"Oh, _shit_," he groaned, skipping madly away from the homicidal machines as they let loose with a flurry of frantic beeping. Tiny, deadly rockets flew in all directions, and Eddie gasped mindlessly for breath as he ducked and dodged them.

The room with the button! It might be able to stand up to the rockets! He tore toward the tiny curving stairs. As he launched himself up them, the hooked end of a heelspring slid under a slat of metal and flung him to his knees. He shoved himself upward, wrenching hopelessly at the tangled metal as the turrets swung in his direction.

_Beep-beep-beep_!

He screamed as a hail of fiery death flew at him.

* * *

Deep in a forgotten, disused subway terminal, the Mad Hatter sat in his most comfortable chair and took another quiet sip of tea. A train far above him grumbled past as he watched the twitching, spasming form of the Riddler convulsing on the floor by his feet. The thin metal band around his head twinkled in the dim candlelight as he banged his head repeatedly on the floor.

A small, evil smile quirked the corners of the Mad Hatter's mouth. Maybe next time, Eddie would think twice before maligning Lewis Carroll.


	6. Ending 4: Better Than One

A portal _here_, a portal _here_, and -

The rocket glided through the portals and slammed into GLaDOS. Cold tiles shuddered under the Riddler's bare feet like frightened whales as the lights flashed.

"Okay, we're even now," she gasped. "You can stop."

Eddie popped a pair of portals into the wall and flung himself onto a catwalk wrapped around the upper section of GLaDOS. The next sphere waited for him there, looking disturbingly like an enucleated eyeball. The pale blue lens swiveled and fixed on him as he scooped it up. "One eighteen point two five ounce package chocolate cake mix," the sphere droned happily. "One can prepared coconut pecan frosting."

"This isn't brave. It's murder," GLaDOS said, sounding as if she held back tears. "What did I ever do to you?"

"Would you like a list?" Eddie snapped.

"Three slash four cup butter or margarine," the sphere continued.

"Shut up!" Eddie demanded, cracking the sphere against a damaged panel of wiring. Rather than the flurry of sparks that he'd expected, though, the panel made a sad clicking noise and slowly tilted downward, one corner dangling from the single screw that held it in place.

That wasn't right. Eddie used the tip of the portal device to swing the panel aside. The space behind the panel was blank metal, solid and unmarked.

Eddie wriggled closer and peered down over the catwalk to where the rockets had collided so spectacularly with GLaDOS. Loose wires and rough bits of plastic protruded from blackened and scorched panels...but now that he could see a closer view, it looked fake. Staged. Eddie had witnessed the destruction of many, many large machines - most of them his own - in his lifetime, and nothing about this added up. Where was the hot chemical smell of burning lubricant? Where was the grinding noise she _should_ have been making as her damaged joints propelled her in circles?

The rockets weren't doing any meaningful damage. It was just another game.

"You manipulative bitch," he breathed quietly, a hint of awe in his voice.

"Fish shaped candies," the sphere suggested loudly, covering up his words. "Fish shaped solid waste. Fish shaped dirt. Fish shaped ethyl benzene."

"What was that? Did you say something?" GLaDOS demanded, swinging wildly back and forth. "I sincerely hope you weren't expecting a response, because I'm not talking to you. The talking is over."

"Is it?" he remarked, stepping lightly to the floor. It all made sense now - she'd provided the spheres and a way to destroy them to make him _think_ he was defeating her. The spheres were obviously a decoy! What could possibly make this cake-recipe-spewing sphere in his hand a vital part of her?

He clambered onto the little walkway surrounding her and looked her firmly in the LEDs. "This is ridiculous," he announced, brandishing the sphere. "It's obvious that destroying these isn't actually hurting you. This is a farce and you know it." GLaDOS continued to sway silently. Neurotoxin, smelling slightly of mint and largely of dead raccoon, floated in pale green clouds on the walls. "Hello?" he demanded, clanking the sphere against her as she hurtled past.

"Nine large egg yolks," the sphere commented. "Twelve medium geosynthetic membranes."

"I'm not playing any more," Eddie announced, flinging the useless sphere across the room. He dropped the portal device at his feet and folded his arms. "I'm not going to waste my time "killing" you when there are better things to do."

"And just what might those better things be?" she inquired spitefully. "Finding out what happens after you die?"

"I was thinking more about redesigning the test chambers," Eddie said.

"_You_?" she snorted. "What would _you_ know about science?"

Eddie stifled his knee-jerk reaction - _kill the one who thinks I'm stupid_ - and forced a chuckle. "Listen, lady - computer - whatever. I'm the _Riddler_. Didn't you get the memo? I design deathtraps for a living." The numbers on the clocks lining the room spun downward. He had two minutes to talk her out of gassing him to death.

The motions of her swing slowed almost imperceptibly. "Go on," she said suspiciously.

"I can _help_ you," he offered. "I mean, let's be honest here. Those puzzles were cake, if you'll forgive the expression. They were way too easy."

"You didn't get the fastest time on them," GLaDOS pointed out smugly.

"Because I've got this little problem about jumping across rooms filled with acid!" he snapped. "Listen, do you want this place to be a challenge or not?"

GLaDOS slowly pendulumed to a halt. "How would you change them?" she asked suspiciously.

He had her! "Turn off the neurotoxin and I'll tell you," he said, letting his most charming _I-know-something-you-don't-know_ grin quirk the corners of his mouth. "And if you don't like it, you can turn the toxins back on and I'll go back to your little game." He gestured at the abandoned sphere in the middle of the floor.

It was still reciting its recipe, though no one was listening. "And it contains proven preservatives, deep penetration agents, and gas and odor control chemicals that will deodorize and preserve putrid tissue."

The toxin puffing out of the walls slowly drifted to the floor as the vents irised closed. "Well?" GLaDOS asked.

If you lived in Gotham, and you wanted any kind of chance whatsoever at getting past the Batman, you had to be able to think on your feet. Likewise, if you spent a large part of your time at Arkham Asylum, you had to be able to spin stories for your therapist and verbally maneuver yourself around any inmates that might be feeling those lovely violent tendencies starting up again.

With his best professorial demeanor, stolen wholeheartedly from Jonathan Crane, Eddie set out to convince the computer that he could improve her test chambers and make them at _least_ twice as deadly. "For Science, naturally," he added hastily as she started to sway like a bored child fidgeting in math class.

"There's a balance to these things," he added, "a balance that's totally gone in number 18. You don't want to go all out like that before it's over! How are you going to, er, test their reflexes in a danger situation? You want to lull them into complacency and _surprise_ them!"

The screens surrounding GLaDOS, which had been flashing with a series of pictures featuring cake and industrial equipment, faded to black. A new image filled the screen - an image of Eddie scrambling backward as an unexpected high-energy pellet whizzed by his face.

"...Like that," he finished lamely. He opted for a new tactic. "Okay, but think of this - there are only three actual threats here - the turrets, the acid floors, and the pellets." A vent nearby coughed a tiny cloud of neurotoxin in his direction. "And the toxin, but I'm talking about the _test chambers_," he said pointedly. "I could help you come up with all _sorts_ of new things! And," he added, "I can help you put them in place. Those arms can't reach everywhere, and I bet they're not very good at detail work," he said, pointing to a robotic claw barely poking out of a hole in the ceiling.

"Why would you do this?" she asked, puzzled. "You're not a scientist."

"I like deathtraps," he shrugged. _I also like living, and I'm pretty sure that if you let me wander around fixing things, I can find a handy window to sneak out of._

The claw in the ceiling slowly descended to Eddie-level, carrying something white that flapped as it descended. Eddie grinned when the claw stopped, displaying an official Aperture Science labcoat with only a few bloodstains on it. "You won't regret this," he said, shoving his arms through the sleeves.

Maybe he'd manage to escape, or maybe he'd spend the rest of his days teamed up with a psychotic who he could never really trust and who would require constant surveillance. It didn't sound too terribly bad. Come to think of it, it sounded a lot like his everyday life in Gotham.

He rubbed eager hands together, ignoring the stab of pain from his burned and battered skin. "Who's next?"

The camera feed switched over to a tiny chamber with plexiglass walls, housing little else but a misty pod with the silhouette of a person inside. Air hissed in, dispersing the mist down the ventilation tubes, revealing a very familiar face.

"Specimen #2l43kjsa892nn2/Waynebruce," GLaDOS announced. "Processing."

"Oh, this is going to be _good_," Eddie murmured.


	7. Ending 5: Cheaters Never Prosper

A portal _here_, a portal _here_, and -

_Beepbeepbeep_! The rocket shot through the portals and slammed into the very tip of the metallic iceberg that was GLaDOS. A sphere quietly popped loose and landed on some pipes jutting out from the wall.

"Look," she said desperately, "we're both stuck in this place. I'll use lasers to inscribe a line down the center of the facility, and one half will be where you live, and I'll live in the other half. We won't have to try and kill each other, or even talk if we don't feel like it."

Eddie ignored her. He was starting to feel surprisingly..._good_. Okay, so he'd been burned, bruised, and generally battered from the moment he'd woken up. Pain fired randomly from every part of him as he moved. But it didn't seem to matter so much, now.

Puzzles, games and riddles. That had been his world for years now, a world where he ruled like a mythic king. Oh, certainly the Batman was _almost_ as good as he was - but take away his computers and his irritatingly helpful lackeys, and his intelligence quickly paled in view of the glowing supernova of Eddie's brilliance.

This puzzle, this race to retrieve things and burn them before his time ran out, was going well. GLaDOS was obviously pulling out all the stops to try and prevent him from finishing. And in just under three minutes, he'd defeat her by the sheer overwhelming power of his mind.

Power. That was the thing. In all those years of riddling and subsequent incarcerations in Arkham, he'd never actually _beaten_ anyone with his mind. He'd made life very uncomfortable for some people, to be certain, but the damage his raw intelligence could do was minimal compared to the kind of brute havoc that most of the rogues could unleash with the flick of a finger. There was something deeply satisfying about seeing GLaDOS blow gradually to bits that he'd never experienced by simply trapping someone in a death maze. He acted and GLaDOS was hurt, and the sheer adrenaline lift of destruction made him wonder if Bane and the Joker felt like this _all the time_.

The last sphere was in his hands now, snarling incoherently as he dashed toward the portal. Neurotoxin misted finely over his head as he ducked through.

"I _hate_ you," GLaDOS growled.

The sphere, agreeing, added "Gnayrrrrarghksshkssh" in a gruff, threatening snarl more suitable to an angry wolverine.

Eddie triumphantly dashed up the stairs. All he had to do was press a button and toss the sphere in, and it would be over. He'd win. He'd solve the puzzle, defeat GLaDOS, and go home and bask in his glory for a few years -

He stretched a hand toward the button. Before he could reach it, however, the ceiling above the incinerator exploded, fusing the hatchway to the fire firmly shut. "No!"

A black figure somersaulted through the ruin and landed on the tiled floor, crouching, cape flared dramatically out behind him as he took in the situation.

"_No_!" Eddie pounded a furious fist against the wall of the little blast-shielded room.

With an easy motion, Batman pulled a small metal device out of his belt and tossed it onto GLaDOS. Sparks flew as she stuttered a final, disbelieving wail. Metal squealed horribly against metal as GLaDOS ground to a halt. The tiny LEDs embedded in her outer shell blinked off.

"_NO_!" Eddie screamed, snatching the sphere and racing back down the stairs. "How could you? _How could you_?"

Batman, who still had his attention focused on the dead AI, was only slightly distracted when Eddie belted him on the head with the sphere. It made a sound like a garbage disposal choking on a diamond necklace as Eddie readied it for another pass.

Batman swatted it out of his hand. "Back off," he ordered.

"You son of a _bitch_!" Eddie screamed. "I almost had her!" Filled with the pure fury of those cheated of a shining goal (and, indeed, the fury of the puzzlemaster when he discovers that someone's been cheating), Eddie launched himself at the Batman and flailed madly away with all four limbs, trying to make his displeasure abundantly clear.

As usual, it didn't work. With the air of a parent detaching a toddler yet again from their leg, Batman peeled the Riddler off and dumped him on the ground.

Eddie clawed himself upright and aimed the Aperture Science Hand-Held Portal Device directly at the tiny bat splayed across Batman's chest. Grimacing with rage, he yanked the trigger. A small ball of orange light blipped uselessly off of Batman's body armor and disappeared into nothingness.

"AAAAAAAAAAAARGH!" Eddie howled. He whipped the device over his head and brought it down with a satisfying _thunk_ on the top of Batman's cowl.

One of the tiny prongs on the barrel of the gun broke off with a very final-sounding _snap_. He snatched up the piece and examined it hurriedly. He had to have the portal device in working order! How the hell was he going to get away from the Batman without it? His examinations were interrupted when an all-too-familiar boot heel crashed into his ribcage. He pinwheeled backward, gasping for breath, and did his best to dart away while wrestling with the broken gun. With the heel of his hand, he hammered the broken bit back to where it should roughly have gone and turned the gun on Batman.

_Click_ went the trigger.

Nothing happened.

_Click. Click. Clickclickclickclickclick_.

Then there was nothing but the flat, meaty sound of a fist repeatedly connecting with his body. The bits of him that GLaDOS hadn't managed to break were immediately tended to by the Batman until Eddie sprawled limply on the ground, throbbing pain overriding any urge he may have had to get up and continue attacking.

Somewhere in the mass of machinery above them, a faint shower of sparks hissed out of a broken wire. Then, before they could move, a jet of hot air laced with something that smelled like bad eggs rocketed out of a near-invisible set of nozzles lining the tiny walkway around GLaDOS. Lights flashed as Batman's device rattled contemptuously to the ground.

Eddie heard the _thud_ of a heavily armored body hitting the floor only moments before he passed out.

* * *

_Bzzt_. A mechanical alarm sounded, jerking him awake. He stared with a feeling of horrified remembrance at the plexiglass shield over his face. It _whoosh_ed back, revealing a ceiling made of cold grey tiles.

"Hello, and again, welcome to the Aperture Science Computer-Aided Enrichment Center. We hope your brief detention in the Relaxation Vault has been a pleasant one. Your specimens have been processed, and we are now ready to begin the test proper."

Specimens?

He rolled up out of the bed, noting that all his prior wounds had been healed in the endless time he'd spent in suspended animation, and gazed openmouthed at the other pod that had been crammed into the tiny room.

Inside, blinking resentfully in the bright lights, sat Bruce Wayne - shorn of all his helpful little trinkets, armor, and gadgets.

Eddie groaned and flopped back down into the bed. "I hate you _so much_," he grumbled at the ceiling.


	8. Ending 6: Behind the Curtain

A portal _here_, a portal _here_, and -

The rocket crunched into GLaDOS with all the velocity of a groupie chasing a tour bus. The room quivered, the lights flashed, the speakers gabbled gibberish...

And the next sphere popped loose, rocked on the edge of a catwalk far above, and fell neatly into the Riddler's open hand. "Yessss!" he crowed, holding it aloft like a trophy as he raced toward the incinerator. So far he'd torched the morality core and the curiosity sphere, and he was dying to know what came next. (Hopefully, not in a literal sense.)

The sphere's bright blue lens spun and gazed at his face. "One eighteen point two five ounce package chocolate cake mix. One can prepared coconut pecan frosting."

Eddie slowly trotted to a halt. Cake mix? Since when was _cake mix_ a vital component of a computer? Then again, he mused, her programmers probably hadn't intended to turn her into the mechanical equivalent of that guy from Saw, either. Maybe it was yet another flaw in her programming. He shrugged, dismissing the thought, and incinerated the sphere.

_Bam_! The room shimmied again. Eddie ducked and weaved, playing target, until another rocket burned through the portals and collided with GLaDOS. _Spang_! The last sphere popped loose and tumbled to the ground. Eddie scooped it up with one hand, the portal gun tucked awkwardly under his other arm, and bolted for the incinerator. The sphere snarled madly at him, growling with all the passion and fury of an urban wolverine defending an abandoned cheeseburger.

"I'm done reasoning with you," GLaDOS snapped, cold fury freezing the edges of her words. "Starting now, there's going to be a lot less conversation and a lot more killing." Oh, she was mad. She was _furious_. And yet...the sphere was angry too, wasn't it? Something wasn't right here. In theory, he was holding her anger in his arms - so why was she able to be angry at him now?

Curiosity had always been Eddie's downfall. When faced with a question, he _had_ to know the answer, no matter how long it took. Curiosity had set him spinning the tumblers in bank vaults long after the bomb timers had wound down to three digits or less. Curiosity had driven him across the rooftops, into the sewers, and into a lot of messes that he'd prefer not to remember if he could help it.

In this case, it meant that he promptly abandoned the snarling sphere in the middle of the floor in favor of flinging himself up onto the catwalk to take a closer look at GLaDOS. "Stop it!" she snapped. "What are you doing?"

He pried a rocket-loosened panel away from the side of the machine and examined it. It looked..._worn_, somehow, like it had been pulled away for daily maintenance. But the nearest maintenance man was probably a rotting skeleton in a pit of tricolored sludge. It didn't make _sense_!

Eddie dropped the panel, tucked the portal gun through a ragged hole in his jumpsuit, and shoved his hands wrist-deep into the brightly colored wires that nestled together inside GLaDOS like snakes in a coffin.

GLaDOS swung wildly below him, thrashing upward as if she was trying to peer up at her side where Eddie clung like a ravenous parasite. "Where are you?"

Fistfuls of wires sparked madly as he yanked them free. This wasn't right. It looked like a computer designed by Hollywood. It had wires, and little fiddly metal bits, and tiny blinking lights, but it wasn't _functional. _He'd torn out enough wiring to fully refurbish an average split-level house, and yet there hadn't been any effect on -

_Beepbeepbeep_! Eddie flung himself to the side and yanked the discarded panel over himself as a rocket smoked by, cracking hard into GLaDOS' exposed innards. _Boom_. Wires and twisted bits of metal puffed into the air like deadly confetti.

Eddie eased himself out from under the charred panel and examined the smoking black crater in the side of the massive machine. A spiderweb of wires stretched uselessly over an ashy, glasslike shell about the size of an airline bathroom.

With one folded-over sleeve, Eddie quietly rubbed away a patch of soot on the glass. There, in the glowing green darkness, was a person - a woman - kicking levers, pressing buttons, and barking commands into a microphone. "Stop it! Stop it _right now_!"

With a mischievous grin stretching his lips, Eddie politely knocked on the glass. The woman spun in place, controls forgotten, and glared furiously at him. "Morning!" he chirped.

"You stop right there or I _will_ gas you," she growled.

Sometimes, finding the right answer involved a lot of research, and thought, and squinting over dusty books long into the night. And sometimes, all it took was a blunt object - like the back of a portal device - and a really hard swing against the missile-weakened glass. Like _that_.

The woman leapt for her controls as shattered glass exploded toward her. Eddie, with reflexes honed by far too many gun turrets and energy pellets, fired a portal into the tiles directly under her feet. She yelped and clutched at the panel, hugging it ferociously as her feet dangled over fifty feet of empty space.

"Gas me, and you gas yourself. Your choice," he said smoothly.

"I mean it! I'll kill you!" she shrieked, wriggling toward the button clearly labeled _Turret Defense System Autofire_.

"Go ahead," Eddie shrugged. "Blow me up. Of course, the explosion will probably knock you right off of your controls...and since _you_ don't have heelsprings, I bet a fall from here would _really_ hurt."

"You bastard," she snarled.

"Look who's talking!" he chuckled, toying with a palm-sized piece of glass that hadn't quite separated from the shell when he'd done his best Bane impression. "Ah-ah-ah!" he chided, pulling it free and frisbeeing it at her sneaky fingertips as they crept toward the button. The glass broke into tiny pieces, covering the controls with sparkling bits of light.

"What do you _want_?" she snapped, giving him a death glare that probably would have intimidated an average person. Eddie, who was used to getting that glare at a much higher intensity from the Batman, ignored it.

What _did_ he want? Well, for starters, he'd like to know where he was, and what he was doing here, and who _she_ was...but he'd never been particularly fond of interrogations. Interrogations always implied that the questioner didn't know what was going on, and Eddie _hated_ looking like he didn't know everything.

"First things first," he said, sucking lightly on a bleeding fingertip. Chucking shattered glass around barehanded probably hadn't been the best idea in the world. "What do _you_ want with _me_?"

The woman craned her head around and examined the air near her feet, as if wondering whether a fifty-foot fall would really be all that bad. Then, with a sigh, she began filling Eddie in on the things he'd missed while he was..._resting_ in Aperture's antechambers.

* * *

Cave Johnson had a dream. It wasn't a particularly stunning or inventive dream - in fact, he wasn't actually dreaming anything _new_ - but it was his dream, and he had the ambition and the touches of obsession necessary to start his own business.

Aperture Science, maker and manufacturer of the world's finest shower curtains, opened its doors in 1953. By 1956, the company had made enough of a name for itself to be awarded the contract to supply shower curtains to every branch of the military - except, curiously enough, the Navy, whose Appropriations Committee dismissed the newcomers in favor of their old contract. It was a decision that would leave a lasting mark on the world. For decades afterward, Johnson agonized over the outcome. What didn't the Navy like about him? Why weren't his products good enough? Was it just that he was new on the scene? Eventually, through a complicated series of disguises, diversions, and distractions, he weaseled his way into a Naval base for a personal inspection of their oh-so-superior shower curtains.

They came apart in his hands. The stitching was shoddy, the grommets were rusted, and the material itself was subpar. Who would want _this_ over his own beautiful work? There had to be an explanation for this!

There was, and it was very simple: Nepotism. The Appropriations Committee, under advisement from a certain high-ranking man named Pike, had chosen this trash calling itself "Pike's Finest" instead of his own little works of art. This would not be tolerated. Something had to be _done_.

And, since he had been the CEO of a major industrial company for more than twenty years, he was just the man to do it. They didn't like his shower curtains? He'd give them some shower curtains they'd _really_ love.

Seven members of the Appropriations Committee - and it didn't matter that they'd been replaced by younger men in the sixties, he was trying to make a _point_ here - and seven deadly rubber shower curtains. It was brilliant. It was visionary. And maybe, just maybe, they'd smarten up and sign with _him_...

All in all, the plan was perfect right up to the moment when he accidentally landed head-first in a barrel of gleaming mercury. After several rounds of hospitalization and every medical treatment known to man, Cave Johnson knew that his time was short. His kidneys were failing, among other things, and he was going to die.

Inspiration took him deep into the world of plans as he frantically tried to make sure his company could weather the ravages of time. His underlings smiled, and nodded, and just as frantically tried to piece together some kind of functional plan out of the old man's wishes - because, as they'd soon discovered, the mercury had soaked right into his brain and killed off most of the cells responsible for little things like logic and sanity.

To put it simply, Cave Johnson now believed that time was running backward. In order to take full advantage of this knowledge, he laid out a three-tiered research program. Tier One was known as the Heimlich Counter-Maneuver, and was fairly straightforward in its design to stop people from stopping people from choking to death. Tier Two, in a similar vein, was designed to purchase last wishes from children and instead redistribute them to deserving, healthy adults. Thus, the Take-A-Wish Foundation was born.

And then the respected Mr. Johnson had grown weary of outlining his grand plans. "Tier 3," he muttered. "Some kind of rip in the fabric of space...That would...Well, it'd be like, I don't know, something that would help with the shower curtains I guess. I haven't worked this idea out as much as the wish-taking one."

By the end of 1980, Johnson's wishes were being fulfilled at a breakneck pace. People were choking to death, dying children were sobbing, and the government was starting to get very, very suspicious of their pet shower curtain company. An investigative committee was promptly convened. During the proceedings, a panicky engineer let the details of all three initiatives slip in a babbling stream of explanations and frantic finger-pointing. The Senate members, recognizing the potential value of a 'man-sized ad hoc quantum tunnel through physical space with possible applications as a shower curtain', sent the Aperture execs home with stern instructions to put an immediate halt to Tier 2. (Tiers 1 and 3, however, definitely had some military potential.)

Things clicked along quite merrily inside Aperture Science after that. They had government funding, they had a secret project, and they had a new CEO who was slightly less insane than the mercury-poisoned Mr. Johnson. Early tests were looking good, and inconveniently ignorant or stubborn personnel were mysteriously choking to death on lamb chunks. Truly, it was a golden age for Aperture Science.

The golden age promptly became ungilded on the morning they discovered that Black Mesa, a rival with an irritating habit of winning government contracts, was working on a very similar portal device. With the typical calm shown by creative types, they panicked and immediately began looking for a way to get the edge.

They found that edge with GLaDOS - who was, at this point, little more than an idea for the perfect research assistant. She would be computer enough to do the most mindless or complex of tasks, and yet she'd be human enough to create new ideas and new configurations of machinery. She and she alone could make Initiative 3 a possibility. They began design and construction immediately.

* * *

Of course, the version of events narrated by the stranger under the glass wasn't nearly so concise. She wandered into digressions, alternately praising and railing against the man indirectly responsible for GLaDOS' creation, and equally loving and scorning the scientists that had put the bits of her massive machine together. Eddie bore it patiently, as he did every time a clearly insane person decided to share their background with him. Knowledge was power, after all, and he often learned more about a person in one crazy monologue than some people could learn in a full week of normal small talk.

The woman finally wound down, shifting her grip on the control panel so that she dangled from her inner elbows on a pair of convenient handles.

"That explains this," Eddie said, knocking the back of his hand against the scorched machinery surrounding him. "It doesn't explain you."

She gave him a look packed solidly with haughty disdain. "GLaDOS has a genetic lifeform component," she pointed out. "Me."

"You don't look much like a _component_ of that thing," Eddie said.

"I wasn't, at first," she said, a dreamy look coming into her eyes. She was obviously remembering something happy. Eddie felt his legs tense automatically, preparing to run as fast as possible. A happy memory from _her_ could be anything. "I was in charge of that part of things. We were going to run out of grant money if we didn't produce anything, so I volunteered to be...sort of a puppeteer, just until we got the GL up and running. The government was coming in only a month! We _had_ to be ready, right away, so I spent days in here, learning GLaDOS, how she worked, inside her head..." A truly beatific smile lit up her face. "And then she spoke to me."

"I'm sure she did," Eddie agreed placidly.

"How would you know? You weren't there!" she snapped, irritated that her memory had been interrupted. Her face softened into happiness again. "She told me...oh, she told me _everything_...and on the day the government came..." That familiar burning hatred started smoldering behind her eyes again. Eddie casually snaked a hand onto a protruding panel outside of her field of vision, ready to yank himself away if necessary. "Farrigan told them that _he'd_ been the one to finish GLaDOS, that _he'd_ worked day and night when really he'd been at home with that fat wife of his...We couldn't let that idiot lie to them like that, not when it was _us_ who had finished it together, _us_ who had put together the portal gun..."

"What did you do?"

"Oh, we killed him," she assured him cheerfully. "And then, well, everyone started running around, trying to call security, trying to separate us! We had to gas them all, we just _had _to, and then we realized the device still needed testing. So, one by one, we loaded them into the Relaxation Vaults and we've been testing the device ever since..."

"That still doesn't answer my question," Eddie said, somewhat aggrieved that he'd had to ask it yet again.

"Hmm?"

"Why _me_?"

"You," she said softly. "Do you remember trying to steal a truck full of anhydrous ammonia?"

"Which one?"

"The _last_ one." She scowled. "The one with the robot driver?"

"That was you?" He matched her scowl with one of his own. "That truck was mine," he said flatly.

"I got there first!" she snapped.

"I left a riddle for it two full weeks before it left the loading dock. It was in Gotham, I had a riddle on it, it was _mine_." No other rogue would have touched it with his mark on it. This woman, on the other hand..."Your robot torched my hat," he continued, recalling the one thing that had left a very permanent mark in his memory. He rarely forgot people who set him on fire.

"Your hat was stupid," she shot back.

"Your _lab_ is stupid," he snapped.

"How dare you! You'll die for that," she snarled.

"Oh yes?" Eddie drawled. "Come and get me."

With a shriek of utter rage, she reached out for her controls. Of course, since she was only holding herself up with her elbows, this meant that her only means of support vanished and she disappeared through the portal in the floor faster than a cell phone dropping through a sewer grate.

There was a shrill scream from behind him, ending in a crunchy _squish_ as whatever remained of the Genetic Lifeform splatted on the floor. Without looking at the mess, Eddie moved the portal to just below his feet and knelt down, poking his head through it into the little glass shell. Interesting. Very, very interesting...He reached inside and fumbled with a familiar-looking little lever about halfway up the wall.

_Click_. What was left of the wires over the glass shell broke away in a neat rectangle as a door swung open. Eddie banished the portals, propped the door open with the portal gun, and stepped inside. "**Hate twas up**," he muttered, running envious fingers over the panel. With a setup like this, think of the deathtraps he could build back in Gotham!

..._Why go back to Gotham_? The thought pinged around in his head like a tiny hummingbird. _Why not stay here? Make it a _proper_ deathtrap? Make it my own_...

Yes...

His fingers caressed a little button labeled MIC. As the smoke finally cleared away, and the lump of ex-human on the floor stopped twitching, a strangely flat giggle echoed into the tiled room.

* * *

_Author's Note: Portalportalportalportalportal. In base four, I'm fine. Aperture Science's glorious history can be accessed after you login at aperture science dot com, provided that you know the super-secret username and password that certainly aren't lurking anywhere in this chapter for you to find and read. Really._

_I know that some of you are waiting for the next Eddie/Jackie story. I'm rather impatient for it as well! I am working on it, I promise, but there are things that must happen first, otherwise bits of the story won't make sense. In the meantime, I urge you to check out 'Freak Accidents', 'Shattered', and whatever other bits of Gothamy nonsense I clutter up this site with. _

_Thanks for reading, and go have some delicious moist cake! _


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